The Raven's Progressive Matrices™ (RPM) is the leading global non-verbal measure of mental ability. It is a measure of educative ability - the ability to make sense and meaning out of complex or confusing data, the ability to perceive new patterns and relationships, and to forge (largely non-verbal) constructs which make it easy to handle complexity.

The RPM usefully provide an assessment of non-verbal ability, an important feature for our ethnically diverse population. The test offers three progressively more difficult forms intended for different populations. Items on all forms ask the examinee to identify the missing component in a series of figural patterns. Grouped in sets, the items require increasingly greater skill in encoding and analysing information. The test can be individually or group administered. The three forms are:
Coloured Progressive Matrices™ (CPM), Standard Progressive Matrices™ (SPM), and Advanced Progressive Matrices™ (APM).

The Raven's CPM measures clear-thinking ability. The items are arranged to assess the chief cognitive processes of which children under 11 years of age, are usually capable. The Raven's CPM items are arranged to assess cognitive development up to the stage when a person is sufficiently able to reason by analogy and adopt this way of thinking as a consistent method of inference. This stage in intellectual maturation appears to be one of the earliest to decline as the result of organic dysfunction.

The Raven's CPM produces a single raw score that can be converted to a percentile.